Making an "ACARS"

[Tom]

Hi all,

I'm looking to make a script to run as an equivalent to that of FSACARS/kACARS etc which instead gets data from online xml feed(s).

I just want to be able to feed the live map from it and compile & automatically send PIREPS to the system when they're completed.

After looking through the FSACARS and kACARS scripts in the modules folder I'm still not really picking up how I would do it.

Would anyone be able to explain how the process works, what files are involved and what data will need to be provided?

Thanks

[Tom]

Can't anyone help? Not even explain how the ACARS system works and which files I need?

[Nabeel]

Basically you create a script, and you can create it as a module. Your app has to hit that module (or a cron or something if you're reading a feed), where that code gets run.

You need to call one of the ACARSData functions, to file a PIREP or update an actual flight status. To do that, you fill in a data structure and pass it to it. For example, kACARS is updating a status of a flight:

https://github.com/nshahzad/phpVMS/blob/master/core/modules/kACARS_Free/kACARS_Free.php#L179

There's that array, which get's passed to UpdateFlightData().

So perhaps it will be something like simplexml_load_data('your feed url'), and then filling out that data structure and passing it to UpdateFlighData.

FilePIREP is similar:

https://github.com/nshahzad/phpVMS/blob/master/core/modules/kACARS_Free/kACARS_Free.php#L255

[Tom]

Right ok, so seeing as I'm doing it with XML rather than an actual program I'm going to have to set a cron to run the script?

How often should that run? I believe my host sets a limit to 15 minutes - would that be a problem do you think?

I think I have an fair idea for how to do it now.

[Nabeel]

Right ok, so seeing as I'm doing it with XML rather than an actual program I'm going to have to set a cron to run the script?

How often should that run? I believe my host sets a limit to 15 minutes - would that be a problem do you think?

I think I have an fair idea for how to do it now.

Yeah, 15 minutes is OK. You can set WGET or curl as a script to call yoursite.com/index.php/module/retrieve, where this will run this code:

class Module extends CodonModule { 

 public function retreive() {

// your XML parsing code in here, 
$cws = new CodonWebService();
$xml = simplexml_load_string($cws->get ('URL to your XML'));

// continue
 }
}

And you can do all your parsing, etc there as if it's a regular ACARS module